Chicken Waste As Fuel

As we are all well aware, there are governments and scientist all over the world who are battling away trying to find out alternatives to coal and oil for energy production. The result is that there are many different products on the market including solar energy, wind turbines, geothermal heat pumps and biodiesel on the market.

However, one of the more "interesting" ones to come to the fore is chicken waste. If you are a gardener you'll probably have used chicken waste as a fertilizer. Or at least, you will have seen it available for sale as a fertilizer. But it appears that chicken poop can also be used for heating our homes.

A process known as pyrolysis heats the droppings up to a very high heat in order to produce three separate products. These are oil for heating, a slow-release fertilizer and also gas that could one day be utilized for powering the machine that carries out the pyrolysis process.

Frequently, environmental groups have pushed for energy to be created from waste products such as this but have faces opposition because of harmful emissions that have been released into the atmosphere. Opponents of the idea also argue that chicken waste is being sold as fertilizer at very good prices and it's probably more cost-effective if it is used as fertilizer rather than for heating.

There have already been power plants set up to use waste created by the logging and poultry industry however the problem is that they are very expensive to setup and government funding would be required to pay for the $200 million plant. However a plant like that would provide enough electric power for 40,000 homes.

Some people feel that the chicken poop for fuel idea is simply a waste of time because there are better alternatives such as solar and wind that require a lot more development.

Of course, it's so difficult to know what the best option is for our energy needs. It's important that all avenues are explored but it's also important to be realistic about how far chicken poop can go when it comes to producing energy. There are only so many chickens in the world and there simply might not be enough poop to cater to demands.